


A Different Future

by Lilili_cat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilili_cat/pseuds/Lilili_cat
Summary: Drelfina's ficI know I'm not alonewon't get out of my brain...so here's what I think Hashirama's thoughts might have been.Edit: now with other people as well.
Relationships: Senju Butsuma & Senju Hashirama, Senju Butsuma & Senju Tobirama, Senju Hashirama & Senju Tobirama, Senju Hashirama & Uchiha Madara
Comments: 787
Kudos: 197





	1. Hashirama

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drelfina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drelfina/gifts).
  * Inspired by [I know I'm not alone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21105716) by [drelfina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drelfina/pseuds/drelfina). 



> Surprise, drel. It won't leave my brain. I hope you're happy...

Once upon a time, Hashirama would gaze far off into the horizon and wonder, _what if_. What if the clans could just stop fighting and get along? What if they could stop sacrificing little ones, little brothers, treasured people? What if he could lay down his sword, strip off his armor, use his mokuton to grow, to heal, to nurture as he so desperately aches deep inside his chest, and extend a hand in greeting, in friendship to people who are supposed to be their ancestral enemies?

Supposed to, he thinks.

Are, he knows his father and his brother would say. (Would have said.) And although the two are different, their father beholden to tradition and hidebound in his ways, his little brother already too pragmatic for his own good (was, was, _was_ ), the end result is the same. No one trusts in the vision he has, in his wishes for the future, and so he must put this part of him away.

He wants to do more. He wants to _be_ more. Not just a shinobi, not just a tool, but unfettered from all of that. Free to utilize his talents and let loose his laugh and watch ten thousand seedlings sprout in joyous harmony.

Or what should have been joyous.

Instead...instead...

He's here again, standing in front of a mound of dirt, the only difference this time that there is nothing inside. Only an empty coffin where the body should go, where a form so beloved to him, so cherished should (should not, not ever, never, never, never) reside. He's standing here again, this time, for the final time, because what else has he to lose?

Kawarama. Itama. _Tobirama_.

He's lost it all.

His father is looking at him, those brown eyes hard as Hashirama has never seen before. Tobirama was his favorite, of course. The realist to Hashirama's idealism. Practical and sensible where Hashirama would prefer to dream. And yet it is Hashirama who stands here, once more, and Tobirama who is...who is...

It's hard to breathe suddenly, and Hashirama can feel his throat closing up, clamping down on the screams threatening to rip themselves out of his chest. He bears down on it, his teeth creaking with the effort.

One moment passes. Two.

And it doesn't go away (it will never go away), but it passes. Just another momentary, expected ritual in the life of a shinobi no mono.

Ah, kami-sama.

Where is the justice in it? How is any of this right? Three _grown_ Uchiha against his young brother. And the marks on them, the state of their clothes, it can only speak to...to...

He wants to retch. He almost does. Only the thought that he would be defiling the only grave his brother would have, that he would be desecrating this last spot where he can pay his respects to his last precious person keeps the burning down, locked inside the way Hashirama wishes he could lock away his emotions.

How much easier it would be if he were like his father. How much easier it would be if he were a proper shinobi no mono.

He glances at the man out of the corner of his eye and quickly looks away. It's not so much the severity in them that has him flinching (stern brown, always stern and hard when it comes to him), but that hint of wetness, the sheen of water.

Maybe...maybe it wouldn't be easier if he were a proper shinobi no mono. Only easier to hide. The pain remains the same.

The paper is being burned now. The incense lit. The food—peaches, Tobirama's favorite—are lovingly placed next to the mound. Flowers (because Tobirama loved wisteria) nestle around them.

Hashirama watches.

Hashirama breathes.

It should be easier by now. It should be easier.

How many times has he gone through this?

Kawarama. Itama.

He should _know_ how to deal with this now. How to act.

(There wasn't even a body. What they've done with him, whatever they did to end his young life, they couldn't even leave him peace in death.)

He wants to scream. He wants to scream and run to that riverbank, find that boy who he _knows_ is Uchiha Madara and _shake_ him. Demand anwers. Demand to know _why_ they targeted his little brother and if their budding friendship was a trap all along...

And it's this thought, more than anything else, that makes him want to curl up right there and simply die.

Because...because...

Because he had snuck away, these past few weeks, to go meet with that boy. Because he had left Tobirama behind. Because Tobirama had been looking for _him_ when he was ambushed.

And doesn't that mean that Hashirama killed his own little brother?

Father is still looking at him, as if expecting him to go on another outburst, another condemnation of their lifestyle and demand that they extend their hand in peace instead.

Well, he won't do that. Not anymore.

Kawarama. Itama.

And now Tobirama.

And it was _his_ neglect, his dreams that got Tobirama killed.

(His last precious person. His beloved little brother.)

He understands now.

He'll be the perfect shinobi no mono.

(There's no one left.)


	2. Butsuma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, since drel and I started chatting about Butsuma...

Senju Butsuma watches as the dirt is piled on, as his most favored son—he loved the boy, he _burned_ with fierce pride and warmed with a tenderness that he had long thought left him—and says nothing. He watches as shovelful after shovelful of earth is put on top of an empty coffin, watches as the very beat of his heart is muffled underneath the soil hitting the glossy wood (expensive, foreign, imported and well worth every single bit of blood and tears and sweat they needed to mission-grind for to save up the goods to trade for it)...and doesn't say a single word.

What is there left to say?

What is there left to do?

His son, his _Tobirama_ , is gone. Gone, most likely dead—

(But he still doesn't want to admit this. He still doesn't want to acknowledge it. He has already, how can he not, it's been _weeks_ , but he desperately, desperately wants his beloved brilliant little son to be alive, even if he's being held bondage in some brothel or in the mines. Any chance. Just any chance at all. Please, _kami-sama_.)

—and all they have to bury him with is an empty coffin and his meager small belongings in his room.

That's it.

That's all.

That's all that's left of them, after the shinobi no mono life.

(But he's always wanted so much more for his children. He wanted them to be on _top_ , to _succeed_ in the way that he and his forebears never could, so that they wouldn't have to fear that in the future, so they wouldn't have to watch any more dirt piled on top of stiff beloved bodies and feel the weight of earth on top of their hearts. He wanted them to _crush_ their enemies so that there would be no more threat against them, so that they could finally, _finally_ live free of fear and pain and heartbreak.)

He watches as the coffin is slowly hidden from view, watches as his eldest stands nearby, eyes so very glassy. He distantly wonders if the boy will faint.

He finds, at this moment, that he can't quite care.

Hashirama has always spouted his ideals of peace and love and unity, and Butsuma would normally snort at such a thought. Peace? With those Uchiha monsters? Unity? With the very _beasts_ who fell upon three of his sons?

And what they did to Tobirama in those final few hours, what Butsuma saw when he looked upon their dead bodies...

He should be glad that at least Tobirama managed to take them down with him. Even as he was being...at _least_ they did not escape their deed with their lives intact. But he would trade it all and every single other thing he has besides to just have his little son by his side again, to be able to put his hand on top of fluffy white hair, ruffle it fondly and show (because he can't say it, he can't mouth the words, he can't get the feelings past his throat and out of his chest) him just how _proud_ he is of him. How he loves him so very, very much.

And he wants so very much to strike his eldest because _Tobirama had gone looking for Hashirama when he was ambushed_.

He watches the dirt pile grow into a mound and breathes.

He knows he should be better to his eldest. He knows that it was wrong to love and adore and hold in higher esteem his younger over his elder, that bad things happen to those who upset the natural order of things (Daimyo before subjects, elder before younger, male before female), but he simply _can't_.

Hashirama had been secretly sneaking off, doing who knows what, and Tobirama is gone because of it.

He's a bad father. He's a good shinobi no mono, but a bad father, to feel this way, to think this way.

But...

But that is perhaps the very thing that stays his hand, for now.

 _Bad things happen to those who upset the natural order of things_ , and doesn't that include him, too? Putting the younger above the elder, favoring Tobirama over Hashirama, _loving and being more proud of his younger son over his oldest son_...

Had he caused this?

Was this divine retribution from the kami for being unfaithful to all that is right and good, as so often goes in those stories? Was Tobirama's (death) not being here now _his doing?_

He doesn't know.

All he knows is that he aches, deep inside, and he wants to scream and to destroy and even to (cry) denounce the very kami themselves for taking his youngest away from him. But he doesn't.

He doesn't speak, he doesn't cry, he doesn't even make a single sound.

What's the point?

His little son, his beloved little Tobirama...is gone.


	3. Uchiha Madara

Uchiha Madara looks at hard brown eyes, at lips that used to be joyous and happy and silly (he was such a ridiculous child, all mismatched clothes and a terrible bowl cut and a tendency to cry at the slightest little thing) narrowed into a firm, stern line. He looks at the chakra, contained for now, yes, calm on the surface, but like a slowly building fire, about to explode into ten thousand deadly flaming shards.

Unpredictable, dangerous.

Never words he would have thought to use to describe that boy he met by the river, that day. Never something he would have thought that silly child could have been capable of. But something so very, _very_ expected of the god of shinobi no mono, the terror of the battlefield, who turns the very homes and beds against their occupants and slowly creeps from territory to territory, forcing them all beneath his sandaled feet...

(He doesn't even know what happened. He doesn't even know why that child turned away from him, all those years ago. He doesn't even know what he's done to earn the hardness in those eyes, to earn the back turned upon him when he was but barely a child himself.)

He looks at those eyes, again, and shivers and knows that it is only because of their once burgeoning friendship, that memory of that brief respite in the height of summer that he and his clan has had even this much grace allowed to it, this much choice.

Not that it is much.

Unconditional surrender. The Uchiha merged into the village or stomped out of existence altogether. The payment of joining for their children to be taken from them, raised away from the values and customs their parents hold dear.

It's not much of a choice, even if it is more than every other clan got.

(Alive, alive they can do something. _Become_ something again. Dead...dead they wouldn't even be a memory.)

But it's not something he can accept unilaterally. He may be clan head now (father, dead from some kind of organic poison, and isn't that suspect, when the _master_ of plants stands right before him), but something like this needs approval from the Elders as well. More eyes, more brains than his needs to think on this, to weigh it over, balance the gains against the cost, try to figure out if it is a trap of some sort and—

Well.

Well, not that it would matter if it were.

If the hard, bitter man standing in front of him wanted to, he could destroy the entirety of the Uchiha clan.

Madara knows it.

Madara _sees_ it.

“We will consider it, my council and I,” he says finally, shifting, shuffling from foot to foot, trying to look anywhere and at anything except those eyes.

(Same brown, same shape, but so very different from the eyes of that child. Like a whole new other person.)

A grunt.

“Do not take too long. I am not generous enough to extend the offer indefinitely. You have three days.”

Three days.

Three days to discuss and come to an agreement and wrangle the die-hards and calm heated tempers. It's not enough. It's not nearly enough.

Madara opens his mouth, looks up and...

...and closes it.

There's no chance for more. Not from those hard, brown eyes. Not from this alien, dangerous, _frightening_ man.

“Three days,” he agrees.

What else can he do?

(He doesn't even know why.)


End file.
